On 21 August 2019, Phineas Mojapelo, the Deputy Judge President of the South Gauteng Division of the High Court in the case of, Nelson Mandela Foundation Trusts v Afriforum NPC ([2019] ZAEQC 2) ruled that the display of the pre-1994 South African flag – the apartheid flag – constitutes hate speech. Read the rest of this entry »

“Fake news” – a term ironically made popular by Donald Trump – is a real problem for our democracy. This is not news which the publisher reasonably believes to be true because, for example, steps have been taken to verify the information. Read the rest of this entry »

In South Africa, there is no statutory prohibition that a person who is suspected of a committing a sexual offence and who has not been arrested or summoned to appear in a criminal court – like Cliff Richard in the English case – cannot be named before they appear in court.Read the rest of this entry »

The Henri Van Breda case (Van Breda v Media 24 Limited and Others [2017] ZASCA 97) has confirmed that cameras in courts are not only here to stay, but that this is mandated by the South African Constitution in order to facilitate open justice and the right of the public to hear and see what goes on in our courts. Read the rest of this entry »

Public comments on the Prevention and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill [pdf] were due at the end of January. A coalition of some of SA’s best comedians and satirists has taken a stand against the bill and filed submissions arguing that its hate speech provisions are unconstitutional. Among them are Pieter-Dirk Uys, John Vlismas, Jonathan Shapiro (Zapiro), Kagiso Lediga, Conrad Koch (and Chester Missing), Nik Rabinowitz, Tumi Morake, Joey Rasdien, Nina Hastie, David Kau, Casper de Vries, Celeste Ntuli, Mark Banks, Jason Goliath, John Barker, Christopher Steenkamp and the creators of the satirical programme ZA News. Read the rest of this entry »

I acted for Primedia Broadcasting and the South African Editors’ Forum in the appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeal (along with Right2Know and Open Democracy Advice Centre) concerning the now infamous signal jamming and broadcast ban that occurred during last year’s State of the Nation (SONA) address in Parliament. The Supreme Court of Appeal ruled in the plaintiffs’ favour on 29 September 2016 ( [2016] ZASCA 142). Read the rest of this entry »

The most important case of 2015 for the media in South Africa (even though it didn’t involve the media directly) was City of Cape Town v Sanral, as a result of which, once court documents are filed in court, we can now generally regard them as public documents. Read the rest of this entry »

The ANC has dropped a welcome bombshell, saying the law has a chilling effect on free speech. One of the most significant events in the recent South African history of free speech and media law happened last Saturday at a workshop on criminal defamation, arranged by the ANC’s legal research group. Read the rest of this entry »

Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. This is the essence of the principle of open justice. Put differently, the public has a right to have access to the courts, to observe how matters will be decided and to obtain court documents relating to those cases. Read the rest of this entry »